paper crafts.

I saw something online where someone had made some roses out of paper, and I thought that was a great idea. Flowers! Out of paper! What if I made the boutineers for the wedding out of paper roses, wouldn't that just be the sweetest? I decided to give it a try to see how hard it was.

The internet paper roses were made from the pages of an old book, which is two good ideas in one. How appropriate that would be for the wedding of a couple of certified bookworms! I just needed a book. I only had about a thousand in my house, but those were off-limits.

On my next tour of the local thrift store circuit, I looked through the books. And I didn't buy a single one. Not because I didn't see any; most thrift stores are lousy with books. But I had a really hard time finding a book that I would want to rip up to use in my wedding. I didn't want to destroy a book that should be saved for reading purposes. But I didn't want to pin just any old crappy book to the lapel of my beloved.

Finally, I happened upon a Methodist hymnal from the 1960s. And I knew that this was my book. There are plenty of Methodist hymnals out there in the wild. It seemed unlikely that anyone else was going to save this one from the Goodwill. And yet, it had sentimental value, too. I grew up singing hymns from a hymnal very much like this one. In the very front, where I knew it would be, I found John Wesley's Rules for Singing.

I brought my new old hymnal home and discovered that it's very hard to rip apart a book. For one thing, it feels wrong on pretty much every level. For another thing, those dang hymnals are really well-made.

But once I got the pages out, I started making flowers. My first one was a total failure. My second one was not-much better. Despite having clear pictures and written instructions, I was clearly missing something. Everything looks easy on the internet.

So I tried a different style. And I thought hey, that's nice.


Josh loved it, too. After flipping through the hymnal remnants a bit, he even wanted to pick out the songs that would make his boutineer. Not to be relying on gender stereotypes here, but it seems like anytime you can get the groom enthusiastic about any of this wedding stuff, it's a good sign.

Well, that takes care of about 10 hymnal pages. What to do with the other 850?

This could get ridiculous.